Time plays strange tricks.
Ask Dave Jukes.
But it also, in its inevitable and relentless passage, conjures up
strange effects.
When these photographs arrived, via Ian Ward and Baggy Stevens, I thought "Great! Even more history to
build the reputation of MMLE."
It was only when I came to look closer, at the photos and the event, that I noticed
a couple of odd things.
Firstly, I was still dancing.
But much more importantly,
hidden away deep in the recesses of this web site, unnoticed, unlinked (except from the Pedant's Index),
and unloved, there was already coverage of the event.
The text is minimalist, and the page depended on a wonderful set of pictures.
Unfortunately,
the photographs were detroyed years ago in a catastrophic server failure
at my then ISP, and in the days before we had hard disks the size of the universe and
George Bush's ego combined to store back-ups (sorry, backs-up), there was no recovering them.
So, I'm repeating the text here to set the scene.
The original account:
Little Egypt were invited to take part in the annual Beer Festival at the King's Head, Pebmarsh,
5 October 1997.The range of beers was immense, and each of them excellent, from Batemans to
Morland's Old Speckled Hen (Editor's note: I hope this was before
Gr**ne King got hold of the brand and ruined a great Berkshire brew with Suffolk water),
from Fullers London Pride to the extraordinarily-named Your Granny Wouldn't Like It.
The dancing was fun, too,or what we can remember of it: audience participation included Fanny Frail
and a demonic version of The Special, our favourite Molly dance.
Even though some of the colour has faded slightly, there is no doubting the Vim and Vigour with which the occasion was approached,
not to mention Frivolity and Glee.
In some ways, though, this could be a recent photograph. Geoff had already begun to master the finer points of the side drum,
Bob already needed the sunglasses as a disguise,
and Pip was playing the recorder rather than the trombone.
Mind you, you can tell it was a long time ago: the Phantom Fiddler,
back from China, is in evidence, Tommo looks almost tidy, John Aldous was dancing, and some of the
side are dancing in black-and-white. |
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